Simply Delicious can give a dish a title that seems a bit of a stretch at times and this is definitely a prime case of this phenomenon: 12-16 Risotto with Pastrami.

Editor’s note: A big HELLO to those of you coming here from search engines–apparently there’s significant demand for pastrami risotto? This is one of those sites where we (my husband and I) are working our way through an old set of cookbooks–learn more about it here. Don’t expect anything like traditional risotto here (neither of us wrote any of the actual recipes)–but maybe stick around for an interesting read or two? Thanks for stopping by! 👋

The card even announces, “(t)his recipe for risotto differs from the traditional one.” I’ve never seen a dish like this, but the flavor profile was the same as a fancy omelette, just deconstructed before that was trendy.

With ham, this dish wouldn’t have been as interesting.

Ingredients. I used fresh parsley instead of the stuff in the jar.

The rice mixture with 1 cup white wine and 2 cups water. Cooking the rice in wine is what loosely qualifies this dish as a “risotto”.

This new rice cooker is so simple to use. While the rice is cooking, I start preparing the other ingredients.

I’m getting a lot faster at chopping onions, I cut these two onions in less than 2 minutes.

I love the smell of onions sautéeing in the skillet.

After chopping the red and green peppers, I salvaged as much celery as I could. I sliced the celery really thin so it would stretch and Jamie isn’t a huge celery fan anyway.

Check out the chopped pastrami from this closer up angle.

The next step is to toss the chopped up ingredients into the skillet with the soft onions. It is very colorful.

I cracked the eggs for the omelette into the bowl and chopped the parsley.

I’ve made an omelette or two, so I just used my instincts when this part came around. Never made an omelette with chunky parsley in it, but there’s always a first time for everything.

First flip of the omelette! It only broke a little bit. After it firmed up, I flipped it over to the other side to get some color.

In this step, the “risotto” is combined into the pastrami mixture.

The instructions suggested to cut the omelette into wedges. Check out how dark the outside got, I left it on the heat a little too long.

The serving suggestions had you putting a wedge of omelette on top of the risotto mixture. I stacked two wedges because the photo would look better. I really liked this dish, but it is hardly a risotto.